


Light from Within

by Mertiya



Series: Game of Chaos [2]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Family, Genderfluid Character, Hanukkah, Holidays, Judaism, M/M, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 06:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9060637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Jace hates Christmas.  Fortunately, Ral has a solution, and it involves not celebrating Christmas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't have the energy to do gift fics this year, but I felt like we needed a holiday fic, so here it is. Sorry for the lack of discussion of the actual conceit of the universe in this one; the focus feels a bit odd, but it's what I was capable of banging out, so I hope you like it anyways! Thanks to paperclipminimizer for discussion of Chandra's situation.

“Jesus, Jace, how drunk are you planning to get tonight?”

            “Oh, Chandra, I thought you were staying over at Nissa’s.” Jace paused awkwardly in front of the refrigerator, trying to hide his grocery bag behind him. Yawning, his roommate walked in, running a hand through her messy red hair. She leaned over his shoulder, snagged some sliced bread from the fridge, and headed for the toaster.

            “Her apartment got evacuated for a natural gas leak. We’ll be heading to my mom’s house later today. But seriously, man, what’s with all the—” She scratched her head and gestured at Jace’s bag.

            “Oh, um, I was going to—have friends over?” Jace hazarded, staring down at the bottle of cheap wine and vodka.

            Chandra’s eyebrows climbed into her hair. “Really?”

            He deflated with a sigh. “Okay, I was going to get really drunk.”

            Pulling a face, Chandra punched his arm lightly. “Do you want to come to my mom’s house with me and Nissa? It’s not like Christmas Eve is religious for us or anything.”

            He almost considered it, but Nissa and Chandra deserved some time alone with Chandra’s mom. “Nah, I’ll be fine. Christmas isn’t really a thing for me, anyway.”

            The last time he’d celebrated Christmas, it had been with Liliana, and she’d gotten him a flowery top and told him he looked adorable. He’d spent most of the day feeling like he wanted to claw his skin off. Not the greatest experience ever, and still way better than the years _before_ that. No, Jace was definitely done with Christmas. Today and tomorrow would be lonely, but lonely he could deal with, and he’d be able to see Ral in a week or so, probably.

            The door from the hallway opened, and Nissa wafted in, wearing a floaty green negligee. Her eyes were half-shut. She and Chandra must have been up late the night before, and Jace was a little surprised he hadn’t heard them. They didn’t tend to be quiet—or at least, Chandra didn’t. That had been majorly awkward when they’d first moved in together, but he’d gotten used to it. Proof you could get used to anything if you tried.

            “There’s coffee in the coffee pot,” Jace said, as he tucked his bottle of vodka into the fridge with the wine.

            Nissa yawned, then sniffed, and her eyes opened slightly more. “Toaster,” she said.

            “What?” Jace asked in confusion.

            “Toaster!” This time she pointed, and Jace’s eyes followed her indicating finger to where black smoke was starting to waft from the top of the toaster. Oh, shit.

            Five minutes later, the blackened remnants of Chandra’s toast had been scraped out of the toaster, the smoke detector had been dismantled, and Jace was sitting at the table breathing heavily with his hands over his ears. “Okay,” he said. “We need a new toaster. That’s like the fifth time.”

            “Sorry.” Chandra shuffled awkwardly. “I don’t know why it always does that to me. Apparently I’m bad luck around toasters.”

            “It’s because you’re the only one who puts the toaster onto the maximum setting,” Nissa pointed out, then leaned over and kissed Chandra on the cheek. Jace tried to suppress the sudden flash of jealousy. He really shouldn’t be feeling so lonely; he even had a boyfriend now. It was just that they’d only been dating for about a month, so it wasn’t really feasible to spend the holidays together, and Jace really kind of hated Christmas at this point.

            “Hey, Jace, did you actually get groceries with your liquor?” Chandra asked. “I need to get dressed so Nissa and I can head over to Mom’s, but I don’t want to leave you to starve.”

            “Um,” said Jace. “I think there’s some sandwiches in the fridge. And there’s still some prasad candies in the freezer.”

            “Oh, fuck, I forgot about those,” Chandra sighed. Every few weeks, like clockwork, her grandmother sent her more. They never managed to go through all of them. “Well, I guess if you want to get rid of them…”

            Jace didn’t say that he wasn’t hungry, and that he was probably not going to eat a damn thing all day. Neither his roommate nor her girlfriend would approve, and, worse, they were probably right. Getting drunk on an empty stomach was a recipe for a really really miserable day tomorrow. On the other hand, it being Christmas was already a recipe for a really really miserable day.

            “Gonna get dressed,” Chandra said, getting to her feet. “Nissa, you should, too.”

            “Probably,” Nissa agreed. “Are you a girl today?”

            “Yeah.” Chandra grinned. “I would’ve dressed like a girl anyway—I mean Mom’s okay with the genderfluid thing, but we might have other relatives coming around—but lucky me I actually _feel_ like a girl, so no dysphoria. Nice bonus Christmas present.”

            Jace sighed as the two of them headed out of the room, and then looked over toward the fridge. He really probably should not get started on drinking _this_ early, but it was damn tempting.

            His phone vibrated, and he stared across the table at it. It might be Liliana. There was a fifty percent chance she was going to try to get him to spend Christmas with her, which was just—fuck no. Making a face, he finally reached across the table and hooked the phone over to him.

            It was a text from Ral. _Want to spend Hanukah with my family?_

~

            Natalka Zarek peeled potatoes vigorously. _Do not screw this up_ , she’d said sternly to Alexei. He’d rolled his eyes, but at least he’d muttered that he would try. It had only been in the last year or two that her eldest son had started spending time with them again. She thought her husband knew that. She hoped he did.

            _God_ , she prayed, _let him trust us again_. Then she paused. _Let us deserve it_ , she added.

            She still felt sick, thinking about the morning when she’d gone in to waken her twelve-year-old daughter for school and had found her room empty except for a note, _I’m not having a bat mitzvah._ She’d spent the whole day looking, frantic, until her husband’s mother had called to say that R—Ral was with her.

            Alexei had gone to get Ral back. Marzanna had told him that Ral was staying with her now. There had been a shouting match. At least it hadn’t actually escalated into a custody battle, but there had been a series of passive-aggressive notes exchanged. Alexei and Natalka tried to pick Ral up from school when he went back. A wary Ral had let them pack him into the car to drive him back to Marzanna’s, but had practically thrown himself out when Natalka asked what had happened to his “beautiful long hair.” At least he’d waited until the car was stopped at a red light.

            Six months of soul-searching, pleading with Ral to reconsider, and research on transgender issues later, Natalka came across an old journal entry from when she was pregnant. _Amniocentesis tomorrow_ , she’d written. _Will it be a boy or a girl? I’m curious, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. I’ll love my baby no matter what they turn out to be._ She’d cried for almost two hours before sending Ral an apology and a request to be invited to his bar mitzvah.

            Over the next few years, she had somewhat managed to mend her relationship with her elder child. Ral was still wary and closed-off, and Natalka respected his right to be and tried not to intrude on his space when he didn’t want it, no matter how much the rejection hurt. She was, she considered, the one who had rejected him first.

            Alexei, though, hadn’t changed his mind. Stubborn. Like father, like son, Natalka thought despairingly. It wasn’t until Ral’s high school graduation that they’d spoken again, and it had, frankly, been an unmitigated disaster. Natalka had desperately tried to stop Alexei from calling Ral by his original name, failed, and then watched as Ral calmly and viciously attacked everything about his father’s appearance, outfit, and religion, until Natalka had practically dragged Alexei and Ral’s little brother Jaro away.

            A year later, Alexei had begrudgingly allowed her to start inviting Ral home for the holidays and had written a curt note to Ral acknowledging his gender. She still wasn’t sure what had changed his mind; he hadn’t said. Ral had only come because she and Jaro had both begged him to. Surprisingly, both Alexei and Ral had made it through dinner without saying anything patently insulting about one another, although Ral had made several disparaging remarks about “idiotic superstitions,” which had gotten him a glare from his father. Natalka had started having him around for meals in the vicinity of holiday time without requiring him to stay around for the actual religious bit.

            But this morning he’d called and asked if he could stay for the whole evening.

            “Of course,” Natalka said blankly. “Why?”

            “So I have a boyfriend,” Ral had said bluntly. “I want to bring him with me and I want you to give him the whole fucking Jewish shebang, okay?”

            Natalka frowned. “I mean—if you really want—” It seemed like an odd request, but it was so rare for Ral to ask for anything from his family, especially if it involved spending time with them in a religious context.

            “Look, his parents were Jewish, but they died when he was really little, and he had a really shitty childhood. He’s never gotten to celebrate any of the Jewish stuff, and I don’t think he’s ever really had a family. Plus he fucking _hates_ Christmas, and, like, with Hanukkah being on Christmas this year…”

            “All right.” Natalka did not have particularly high hopes for Ral’s choice of boyfriend, but she could understand his desire to give this to someone he cared about, so she resolved to be polite and try to keep Alexei from criticizing.

            “As long as you can promise me Dad will keep his fucking mouth shut.”

            “ _Ral_.”

            “Jace is trans, okay? And he’s not on HRT, and he hasn’t had any surgery or anything, and if I hear _one thing_ from anyone about him being a girl, we are gonna be out of there right away. I just want to give him—” Ral stalled for a minute. “—I just want to give him a family Hanukkah, but it needs to not be fucking horrible.”

            Oh. “I’ll let your father and Jaro know.” She paused. “You know I have your back.”

            There was a horrible pause. “Yeah, guess so. Thanks, Mom,” Ral said lightly, and then hung up.

            The doorbell rang. Natalka took a deep breath, shaking herself out of her thoughts, smoothed down the kerchief she’d tied over her hair to keep it from getting in the food, and hurried to answer it. Reminding herself one more time that no matter how obnoxious, loud, or frustrating Ral’s new boyfriend was, she was going to be a perfect hostess, she opened it.

            “Hey, Mom. This is Jace. Jace, this is Natalka, my mother.”

            “Pleased to meet you,” the young man with Ral murmured.

            _God, he’s so skinny_ , was Natalka’s first thought. Jace was wearing a worn, navy-blue suit with an old blue tie covered in swirling white patterns, and he seemed almost dwarfed by it. He was at least three inches shorter than Ral, his face thin and pinched, his large eyes hollow in his pale face. And he was definitely not at all what she was expecting. “Pleased to meet you, too, Jace,” she said. “Won’t you come in?”

            _I am going to feed this boy within an inch of his life._

~

            “ _Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melach ha-olam_

_asher kid’shanu b’mitzvohtav_

_vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah._ ”

            Jace couldn’t quite believe it. Instead of spending Christmas Eve getting thoroughly smashed, he was apparently spending the first night of Hanukkah with his new boyfriend and his boyfriend’s family. In fact, he was now standing at the dining room table, hand trembling, as he carefully held the lighted taper—the _shammas_ —to the first candle in the menorah.

            “ _Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melach ha-olam_

_she-asah nissim l’avoteynu_

_bayamim ha-heym_

_bazman hazeh._ ”

            Concentrating on the little glittering candle and the low murmur of the voices of the Zareks reciting the blessing, Jace had a sudden, weird feeling of _déjà vu_. Taking a deep breath, he waited as the candle slowly flickered to life, then, just as carefully, leaned forward and replaced the _shammas_ in its place in the center of the menorah.

            “ _Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melach ha-olam_

_Shehechianu v’ki’monu v’hig’yonu_

_lazman hazeh.”_

The words echoed familiar in Jace’s head. He had a sudden, brief flash of a woman’s smiling face. _Jace, do you want to light the menorah? Let me help_. The soft sound of these words, set to music, _adonai eloheynu_. The smell of sizzling oil frying. Oh, god. _Mom. Dad._

            The smell of sizzling oil turned to the stench of burning, and Jace wrestled against the memories, still bright, still seared into his mind even after all these years, of the car accident. The flame of the candle grounded him, but there were still tears pricking at his eyes. He tried to press them back, but they were still flowing as he sat back down at the dining room table.

            “Jace?”

            “S-Sorry,” Jace gulped, suddenly horrified. “I—I—just—I just need a minute—”

            Ral’s hand was hovering awkwardly near his shoulder when Natalka got up.

            “Jace, would you like a hug?” she asked.

            “Fuck,” Jace managed. Then, “yeah, if—if that’s okay—”

            “Of course.” Soft arms around him. Jace shut his eyes and tried to still the sobs, as Natalka rubbed his back with a gentle hand. “Ral?” Natalka said.

            Ral’s hands were on Jace’s shoulders now. “Hey,” Ral said, softly. “Hey. It’s okay.”

            “You can cry if you want,” Ral’s little brother put in. “Sometimes people say it’s not okay for boys to cry, but it totally is.” He leaned over to Jace and whispered conspiratorially, “Even I cry sometimes, but don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

            That pulled a watery giggle out of Jace, and he rubbed his eyes. “Thanks,” he whispered. “This is—this is great. Thank you.”

            Alexei peered across the table at them. “Hanukkah is about family,” he said, quietly. “If my son wants you to be part of ours, then that’s what you’ll be.”

            There was a sudden hush. Ral’s hands tightened at Jace’s back, and he pressed a sudden, rough kiss to Jace’s head. “Yup,” he agreed.

            “Can we play dreidel now?” Jaro asked.

            “Yes, let’s play dreidel,” Natalka said briskly. “Then I’ll get the latkes ready. I hope you like latkes, Jace?”

            “Um, I think so,” Jace hazarded. “It’s been a really long time since I had any.”

            “Uh oh, my mom’s trying to feed you,” Ral said. “Watch out, you’ll put on about ten pounds in two days.”

            Jace poked critically at his ribs. “My roommate would be okay with that,” he replied. “She’s always trying to get me to eat more.”

            “You are very skinny,” Natalka said, laughing. “I’ll go start the latkes while you dreadfully lazy men play dreidel, shall I?”

            Little Jaro looked desperately torn. “I don’t want to leave you to do all the work, Mom,” he protested.

            “Just this once, it’s okay. You can help wash up, how about that?”

            “Okay. I’ll get the dreidel!”

            “I hope you also like chocolate, Jace,” Ral murmured. “Because you’re about to get a lot of crappy chocolate.”

            “I love chocolate,” Jace said, leaning back against Ral with a sigh. “Thank you so much for inviting me. And—and—Natalka and Alexei, thank you so much for having me. This—really means a lot to me.”

            Natalka and Alexei exchanged a glance that Jace couldn’t read. “It’s our pleasure,” Alexei said. “In fact, thank you for coming. I’m glad Ral has someone to make him happy.”

            Ral’s hands tightened suddenly, one of them reaching up to pet Jace’s hair, and Jace arced backward into the feeling with a soft whimper, because, oh god, he wasn’t sure he deserved to feel this good. “Thanks, Dad,” Ral said.

            “Dreidel time!” Jaro came running back in, and Jace felt something tight inside his stomach loosening as some part of his mind finally managed to get to the point of believing that today wasn’t going to end up being horrible after all.


End file.
